The Effective Team’s Operational Excellence Workbook

By Elisabeth Goodman, 10th June 2015

This is the third in my series of  “The Effective Team’s ” workbooks and it will be out shortly.

THE EFFECTIVE TEAM’S operational excellence WORKBOOK

Elisabeth Goodman (author), Nathaniel Spain (illustrator), 2015 – ISBN 978-0-9926323-7-3

This third book in the series focuses on how to achieve operational excellence.  Here is the description from the back of the book:

“Operational excellence helps us to create a more fulfilling work environment where everyone actively contributes to quality customer services or products and to the efficient flow of the organisation’s end-to-end processes. In this third book for ‘effective teams’ the author draws again on her experience with business support groups such as Library and Information services, and with organisations in the Life Sciences and SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises).

The book reflects her approach as a trainer, mentor and consultant for operational excellence. It takes you through a systematic approach for defining and improving how your team spends its time and resources. It will help you to ensure that you are focusing on the right priorities to deliver value to your customers, and that your processes are simplified and streamlined. As with her previous books on change management and high performance teams, the plentiful principles and methodologies are explained through scenarios and are accompanied by individual or team exercises. There are also notes on further reading.

Again, both operational teams and project teams will benefit from the book’s rich insights and depth.”

THE detailed content of the book

The approach and format for this workbook is much like that of my previous two. It can act as a refresher for people who have attended one of my workshops relating to operational excellence (or Lean and Six Sigma). It can be used as a stand-alone manual for individuals who wish to learn about how to continuously improve their work. It can also provide the basis for planning and facilitating workshops with others.

Please note that this book is an introduction to the discipline, and you might want to read around the subject, take some formal training, or use an accredited practitioner to support and mentor you on your further journey.

Each chapter is designed to reflect my approach for running workshops in operational excellence. The first chapter provides the context and framework for starting any operational excellence initiative. The subsequent chapters are best followed sequentially as they will take you through the framework in a step-by-step way.

There are practical scenarios to show how the various principles and methodologies can be applied in almost any area of work where there is some form of repeated process. Each chapter has an exercise for practising the principles and methodologies, either in teams or individually.

The workbook also includes support materials in the form of full-page versions of illustrations and tables for use as a team and for your individual planning.

Finally, there are references for further reading if you would like to find out more about the subject.

COST AND AVAILABILITY

Copies are priced at £10.00 each, plus packaging and posting, and will be available via the RiverRhee Publishing web page.  Or you can use the RiverRhee contact form to pre-order your copy.